In So Many Ways
by StitchAndRepair
Summary: I Never Knew I Could Be Broken In So Many Ways Set a few nights after 4x05. Ian, with mentions of Mickey.


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It had been a long night at the bar. His vision was beginning to fade, blurring around the edges, the flickering lights moving like a kaleidoscope out the corner of his eye. His head pounded along with the bass from the speakers and he was swaying on his feet, but that didn't stop him from downing yet another shot that a customer had just brought him.

The tequila didn't even burn at his throat anymore, just warmed his chest and watered his eyes. He laughed as he turned the shot glass upside down and slid it into the dirty glass tray beneath the bar, "I think you're trying to get me drunk Andy"

"I would never" Andy replied, eyes wide with fake innocence, his tongue flicking out over the tip of his straw before he sucked it into his mouth, eyebrows raising suggestively at Ian.

Ian just quirked an eyebrow at him before laughing, his voice husky from too many drinks, "Sure you wouldn't"

Andy smiled at him then, wide and friendly and Ian chucked the dishrag from his shoulder at his face and ducked out from behind the bar, picking up a beer on his way.

Throwing the rag onto the table Andy pursed his lips at Ian, his eyes following him as he moved around the bar, but he stayed silent.

Ian made his way through the mass of people on the dance floor and Andy's face fell, even as Ian moved towards him "you're going?"

"Shift's over" He replied, yelling over the sound of the music,

"You headed home?" Andy asked, fingers skimming Ian's arm, eyebrows arching suggestively and Ian shook his head,

"Didn't say that" he smiled, pulling his arm away from Andy before he walked away, moving further into the crowd until he was lost among the many faces in the busy room.

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Sweaty bodies were dancing around him, but Ian was alone. A heady buzz had overtaken and he was lost somewhere between the music and the beer in his hand. He took a large swig, spilling some onto the floor and curled his lips into a smile as a guy approached him.

Ian knew he had served the guy several times throughout the night, knew that the guy had brought him several drink but he couldn't remember his name, didn't really care to know it. But he let him walk up to him, let him stand too close and grab at his hips.

They danced; sweat forming in beads on their forehead. The lights bounced around too fast for Ian to be able to focus on his face, but he didn't really want to see it anyway. His head was still pounding and his body ached with tiredness but the music vibrated through his whole body and when he closed his eyes the sharp pain pounding through his head relaxed.

The guy pulled him closer until their bodies were pressed together, their hips moving in sync and Ian could feel every movement as if the guy was a part of him. Sipping at his beer as they danced Ian's head began to clear. Going on auto-pilot and tuning out everything around him, Ian snaked a hand round the guy's waist and rolled his hips forward.

The guy smiled then, one side of his mouth turning up and his lips parting. He moved his head forward, hand coming up towards Ian's neck but Ian dodged out the way, ducking instead to the guy's neck, pressing an opened mouth kiss just under his ear before the guy could protest.

Ian felt a small hum against his lips as the guy let out a groan, his hand in Ian's hair, pushing Ian closer towards his neck. Ian smiled against his skin at the response before he pressed his teeth into the tanned flesh.

Too hard, but the guy didn't seem to mind.

His skin prickled even more with sweat and it seemed to glisten under the flashing lights. He was too hot and his shirt was scratching at his skin and Ian could feel the guy getting hard against his leg and it should have been enough.

The alcohol swimming around in his stomach and clouding his mind should have been enough, but it wasn't. He couldn't find a rhythm, his hips hitting too hard against the other guys and he couldn't escape from the thunderstorm in his brain. The same thunderstorm that had been brewing since the day, months ago, out in the abandoned car park, - the day he had realized that he had lost Mickey in every way that mattered; when the black eyes and the blood in his mouth had been nothing compared to the damage caused to every other part of him.

For months he had felt on the verge of something - too much energy followed by a crash harder than he had ever felt before. Days not leaving his bed followed by weeks of non-stop partying. He wasn't dealing with what he needed to deal with, had ignored every problem with drugs and drink and sex and anything else that made him forget. Except none of it did, not really. From the moment he sat down on the bus ready to leave the South Side, something inside of him had been off.

He felt like his brain was made of glass, fragile and heavy and unable to take the weight of what he was feeling. He could feel the cracks starting to appear, more and more with every day and he did everything to try and fill them without actually dealing with them. Pulling back from the guy with a shuddering breath, Ian squeezed his eyes shut and downed what was left of his beer. He took deep breaths until all he could feel were the vibrations from the music under his feet and he listened to nothing except the tangled mess of noises around him until his mind dulled, thoughts turning hazy as the alcohol washed into his system.

When he opened his eyes again the guy was staring at him, lips parted and eyes confused, yet still wanting. Ian gave a halfhearted shrug, silently telling him he was fine.

He dropped the bottle onto the floor and let out a burp, barely able to keep his eyes open to focus on what he was supposed to be doing. The man in front of him crinkled his eyebrows like he couldn't believe Ian had just done that and Ian bit back a laugh and tried to pretend he wasn't thinking about home and boys with tattooed fingers and even worse manners than him.

The guy's eyes roamed over him and Ian felt his lips turn up in something like a smile at the attention. He stepped in close again, pulled the guy to him by his belt buckle and ran his fingers over the taut skin beneath.

As the guy looked him over, Ian looked back. He smirked at the guy's dark hair, styled to perfection and he gripped a handful between his fingers. The man's eyes darkened with want and Ian leant in and kissed him. He tugged on the other guy's hair, tangled it between his fingers, and he dragged his teeth over his bottom lip. He watched as his pupils darkened enough to the point where Ian could pretend that the guy's eyes were a dark shade of blue, blown wide with too much coke, and he could pretend that the sweat on their skin was from two boys who stood to close and touched too much on a hot summer night, hidden away from the world on a baseball pitch in the middle of Chicago.

Ian could pretend. Just for tonight. He'd gotten good at that.

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When Ian woke up the sky was already dark again, winter-grey clouds against a pitch black sky, no stars in sight.

Waking up to darkness was nothing new these days - between work at the bar and hiding from the Army he was rarely ever awake during the day anymore. Stumbling out of bed, trying to regain his balance and find his shoes Ian realized he didn't even know where abouts he was, what part of Chicago. Looking out of the window, he realized he wasn't that far from the bar at all.

A woman Ian recognized from hanging around outside the bar on weekends stood across the street and spun idly in circles, her hair frizzy from the weather and a wet patch had formed on her jeans where she had pissed herself. He frowned at her, watching as she stumbled over nothing and fell to the ground, the heels of her hands skidding along the concrete. He closed the curtain at the sound of her laughter, manic and high pitched. Ian looked back at the sleeping heap on the bed, light snores coming from somewhere under the blanket.

He didn't even really remember getting back to the guy's apartment last night. Ryan's apartment, he told himself as he recalled stumbling in through the bedroom door, Ryan stripping off his shirt and mouthing his name into Ian's chest. Ian never told him his.

Scratching at the back of his head and stifling a yawn, Ian picked up his jeans from the floor and shoved them on as an empty tumbler rolled noisily along the floor, disappearing under the bed. 

Ian stared after it, his face contorted in a wince, praying that Ryan didn't wake up. He could vaguely remember the feeling of Ryan's skin under his hands, under his tongue. Salty with sweat, sweet from some type of lotion. He scrubbed at his nose, a memory coming through like white noise in his brain of snorting lines of coke from Ryan's hip bones, of licking a line of salt from Ryan's chest before chasing it with a shot of tequila.

Everything else was a blur.

Unable to find his work shirt, Ian picked up an almost dry hoodie from Ryan's radiator and pulled it over his head as silently as he could. The fabric of the hoodie slipped down past his face and Ian blinked, eyes heavy, as he caught his reflection in a mirror on the wall opposite from him. He glanced at the mirror long enough to see the smudged eyeliner all down his face, smeared with sweat and drunken tears from laughter and alcohol that was too strong. He ran his fingers through his hair once again but it fell flat, sweat and grease making it hang long and limp against his forehead.

He couldn't find his sock.

One sock missing and no shirt under his jacket as he made his way out into the bitter cold, Ian was reminded of Frank. The stale taste of alcohol forming like a fur on his tongue only strengthened it, memories of seeing his father passed out in the snow covered garden seeping into his mind. He didn't know why but he was suddenly struck with a pang of longing - a weight in his belly that made his shoulders slump and he found himself fighting back tears and he couldn't even pinpoint why.

His brain was still fighting off the coke from the night before, fuzzy and sensitive and his eyes felt like they were burning when he looked at any kind of light. His nose was dry and sore, the inside of his nostrils stinging every time he attempted to try and breathe through it. His skin tingled, a mixture of the coke and the cold, and his entire body swum with tiredness - exhaustion so bone-deep that Ian just wanted to crumple to the ground right where he was and never get up.

So that's what he did.

Round the corner from the bar he just slid down against the wall, ignoring the curious glances from passersby, and curled into himself as tightly as he could, cuddling into his knees like they were another person. He didn't even know why he did it, except it felt good to be there then, away from the world, just him on his own, tucked safely between bricks and an empty street.

He sat there and watched with glazed over eyes as his breath smoked out in front of him before it disappeared, fading into the air. He wasn't even really aware of how cold he was, barely noticing as his fingertips began to turn blue. His teeth chattered and his whole body shook and he lost the feeling in his sockless foot a long time ago, but he couldn't bring himself to move.

He was weighted to the ground and he stared, eyes heavy but forced open, at the shaky breaths of air that puffed out of him and he didn't even think there were any tears, but his face ached as though he was crying.

Forcing himself to close his eyes as the wind whipped up around him, sending stray litter scattering along the streets, he tried to calm himself down. But with every breath all he could think of was Fiona. And Lip. And Debbie. And Carl and Liam. And Mandy. Mickey.

Everyone that he'd left behind and everything that he'd fucked up.

The fragile glass of his mind didn't just crack now, it shattered. A million tiny shards piercing at him from the inside out and it was all Ian could do not to scratch and claw at his temples until he was free from it all.

Free from thinking about stuff he cannot change, free from the guilt of the things he wouldn't change even if he could.

He felt a pull in his throat and his fingers itched, his whole body aching for something to numb him again, to close his brain and repair the pieces, just for now. Just for tonight. Duct tape for a job that required a more permanent fix.

His heart was racing like he had run a marathon and his breathing was erratic and too fast. The panic was only building inside of him more as he thought back to when he was nine years old and he watched his mother clutch at her chest, her eyes wide and scared as she struggled to catch her breath.

_A panic attack, _Fiona had told him later.

His mind raced with the memory of his own panic attack. Aged eleven and it was his first time in foster care, his first time properly being separated from Fiona, and Debbie, and even Frank. He had returned home two weeks later and wouldn't leave Fiona's side for three days before she forced him to go to school. It raced with the matching looks of worry on Lip and Debbie's faces when they had turned up at the bar a few nights before. He remembered snippets of their conversation but he was high on MDMA and all he could remember was the euphoric tingling under his skin and the buzz he felt when he saw them. A whole stream of flashbacks poured from him and somehow the happy ones hurt more than the sad ones. Memories of Mickey, of his family, of home. Everything came out all at once and Ian's chest tightened as he sucked in what little air he could, trying to focus on one thing at a time.

_It's just for now. It's always 'just for now'. All the bad shit goes away eventually._ He could hear Fiona saying the words to him in his mind, her fourteen year old self curled against him on the bed as they listened to their parents partying and arguing downstairs. The music vibrated through the floorboards and Ian could feel the vibrations in his chest, Fiona's fingers tracing lines soothingly along his arm._ It always goes away._

The words played on repeat in the broken fragments of his mind until his breathing evened out, calmed enough for him to focus. _Ian_, he heard, _Ian. _Except it wasn't her voice. He unscrewed his eyes as he felt a weight on his shoulder. A hand. Holding him in a firm grip, fingers curling comfortingly into his skin.

His eyes shot open and his heart hammered in his chest before he felt himself relax at the face in front of him. Breathing came easier to him then and he tried to smile at her, but it was off. Tried to speak, but his mouth couldn't seem to form the words. He was happy to see her.

Dark hair and beautiful; too beautiful for where she was from, where she currently was. Her shoulders weighed down too heavy for her young age. She had always reminded him of his sister.

_It always goes away._

"Hey" Mandy said, a warm smile on her face, betrayed only by the worry aging the skin around her eyes, "Let's get you back home"


End file.
